Honda Civic
1999 Honda Civic
What can be said that hasn't been said a million times for the sake of the Honda Civic? Let's start by saying that no one on this side of the pond expected the Honda Civic to be a competitive racecar... but in the land of the rising Sun these cars have been put through the paces since their inception. Honda rolled out the Civic in 1972 as an answer for the oil crisis and since that time it has earned it's role in the zeitgeist of each following decade.
This particular hunk of junk was the first official Dad Mods car (shared project between Jake and Donnie), and was scooped up by a local friend who was stuck having to consider sending it to the scrap yard. No one wants to see a good car end up in the crusher but because of a hit-and-run situation that left the car barely driveable and illegal on the roads, he was forced to send it packing. That's where Dad Mods (MiShift Garage at the time) comes in. We scooped up the car for pennies on the dollar to save it from the crusher and immediately began building it to become an Ice Racer in our local ice racing series'.
The rear end of the Civic was pushed in close to 12 inches from the impact. It destroyed the trunk, rear apron, quarter panel inner and outer and pinned it against the tire. We hammered the pinched steel off of the tire and drove it back to the shop. We immediately began chopping the car up to loosen the material holding the quarter panel and once we were able to; we began pulling the quarter out. After a lot of hammer and force we were able to get the fender in similar length to the "good side".
We picked up sticks of 2x2, 1" round and 1.25" round thick-wall tube to get started. We began building our own subframe and tieing it to the Civic's body. A 4x4 of 16ga was used to make the floor of the subframe and some dimples were added for some more rigidity along with an abundance of plug welds.
Our goal for this car was to build it so it can carry everything it needs to race, so the rear end was engineered to hold tires for RallyX and Ice Racing.
We bent up tubing to make a tailgate for holding the tires in and to help protect the rear area. We had some custom CNC work done to add our old name to the tailgate. We used the factory trunk latch system to locking and releasing the tailgate, along with a tether to keep the tailgate from slamming against the ground when released.
The driver side rear quarter panel was crushed so badly that it lost all rigidity, so in another collision it would collapse far too easy for wheel to wheel ice racing, so we decided to build armor plates for contact!
You can't do all this work to the rear end and then leave the front end to stay stock... so we built a custom tube front bumper and utilized the stock crash beam.
1" and 1.25" thick walled tube was bent up and gusseted to create a very aggressive appearing front bumper that should provide us with some protection in wheel to wheel ice racing.
The Civic needed a name, and because this is built to be an ice racer we decided to call it "The Yeti". Upon painting the car we worked with Elite Tinting and Graphics to have custom graphics and decals done. We couldn't have been happier with the outcome!
Since wrapping up the Civic and getting it in paint we have put it through the paces. Despite missing the ice racing season due to weather ending the season early, we put the car in a major local car show then began taking it to rallycross races. We have learned a great deal from hard driving and shenanigans throughout 2019's warmer months, which makes us excited to take the car to it's first ice racing event in the coming winter. Updates will follow soon!